Indy 4 and Digital Projection

[K Borowski]

What I would give to have that typed up on a fortune and slipped into a cookie on it's way to Georgie's plate. Perhaps he'd listen to fate, if not millions of fans.

 

He may not have listened to fans, but at least he listened to Steven Spielburg on this movie. Can you imagine what the film would have looked like had George Lucas won the pissing match? Digitally replacing Harrison Ford's Whip with a wet noodle anyone??? ;)

[Chris Keth]

He may not have listened to fans, but at least he listened to Steven Spielburg on this movie. Can you imagine what the film would have looked like had George Lucas won the pissing match? Digitally replacing Harrison Ford's Whip with a wet noodle anyone??? ;)

 

I was withholding comment until I have seen it. George doesn't have a good track record lately. I'm just hoping that he is smart enough to let it be a Spielburg movie and not butt in.

[Matthew Buick]

Thanks for that source quote posting, Leo!

 

And "Hi!" Matthew, long time no see!

 

*gets ferouciously torn apart*

 

Seriously, now: focusing on one quite important aspects re. the future of distribution and projection that has a serious consequence about how we see the cinema theatre evolve (or die) and in what way we are going to see projected films in the future (if at all), does matter alot.

 

Having had troubled experiences with digital projection and the way some theatres see it (down to projecting consumer DVDs!), I am learning alot following this debate here about what to look at and what to pay attention to when it showcasing your work to an audience, and that starts with the scanning for the DI from OCN as - frankly - we both would do when shooting docs or shorts on Super 16 or Super 8 - just not with 12K...

 

So this discussion matters as much as looking at Janusz Kaminski's lighting, seeing how they "imitate" Slocombe's cinematography, to spot the odd-one-out digital matte, and doublechecking Fedora goofs and bad frame stability in the Panaflex (particularly tedious task ;) !)

 

Hi, Michael. I've been fairly busy, so I haven't had much time to post.

 

 

I assumed that digital projection would be direct from a scan of the film negative, retaining all of the original film's resolution and the vast majority of it's erm...filmyness? I never expected cinemas would project DVD's. I really do find that intolerable, people go to a cinema for the cinema expirience, not to see horribly magnified 625i, or would it be 'p'? Or are you talking about High Definition? In any case, it's a complete rip-off.

[Michael Lehnert]

Hi, Michael. I've been fairly busy, so I haven't had much time to post.

 

Hope you are fine and all goes smoothly in your world! Give Newcastle my best wishes! :P

 

I assumed that digital projection would be direct from a scan of the film negative, retaining all of the original film's resolution and the vast majority of it's erm...filmyness?

 

Me too. The variances to this is exactly what gets discussed here: especially in light of Spielbergs mostly-non-digital post chain.

 

I never expected cinemas would project DVD's. I really do find that intolerable, people go to a cinema for the cinema expirience, not to see horribly magnified 625i, or would it be 'p'? Or are you talking about High Definition? In any case, it's a complete rip-off.

 

To be fair, I doubt this is widespread! But it happened to me, in a major multiplex cinema in Zürich, during - to add insult to injury - a Kubrick restrospective!! :angry:

[Daniel Sheehy]

I was withholding comment until I have seen it. George doesn't have a good track record lately. I'm just hoping that he is smart enough to let it be a Spielburg movie and not butt in.

Hear hear!!

 

Oh for actors who are able to disappear into the role... rather than the 'big star' phenomena these days where you get [insert big star name here] running amok on screen, answering to the character's name, but doing little else to try and 'become' the character.

[Michel Hafner]

No i am not 4K is the minimum a Anamorphic neg should go through. Iam saying that the amount of information on that negative is about 10k/12K just so much image lost going the 2k way and even 4k but no one YET has come up with 10k DI.

Not even Kodak makes such a claim (e.g. you need 10K or so to get all information from the 35mm negative). So based on what tests are you suggesting this? Fact is the MTF goes for all intents and purposes to zero somewhere between 4K and 8K for 35mm (and is quite low between 2K and 4K already), So what kind of relevant information do you think you can find in the 8K to 12K range?

[Michel Hafner]

First off, I find it really obnoxious when someone disseminates every word of a post I make; this isn't a fu**ing referendum on print technology, it's an internet forum.

I'm sorry, But by posting here in a public forum you agree your views to be seen by others and you invite others to an exchange about the subject matter. If you don't like an argument, why are you here?

I have devoted my life to film, and, as such, I think that my ten years of experience qualify me to determine if one medium looks better to another.

Nobody is telling you you can't judge/feel/argue... one way or another. But if I'm asking for some details it's hardly appropriate to pull the authority hammer and feel 'attacked'. We have all our experiences and preferences and try to make sense of them.

When I see scan lines and artifacts in a film I pay $9 to see, that makes that film WORSE than a film with dust and scratches every time, period.

In your opinion. Sure. I dislike aliasing as well. But it's a take your poison situation. The film print has aliasing too if it comes from the DI, plus additional film artifacts. If there is no DI the standard film print has no aliasing but lack of sharpness and detail, more noise/grain and likely color and contrast deviations compared to the IP and even more compared to the graded negative (if there were such a thing in the analogue world). You will see artifacts in any presentation if you don't blend them out. Your tolerance of one type of artifacts over another will decide your preference.

You're advocating that a film that is intensely effects-heavy NOT go through a DI at all instead of using DI for select elements?

I advocate to do the whole show with DI or at least for the digital master use only the DI parts and scan the rest from the IP (with this rest coming all directly from the OCN). As I explained already. For practical reasons this is usually not done, as far as I know.

How many hundred million blockbusters have you made? I think I know what I am talking about, and I think Steven Spielburg nows what he is doing. When you consider that he made this film with George Lucas, probably one of your heroes, and that he still got it made anamorphically and finished chemically, can you honestly say that he not only knows what he is doing but is so passionate about it that he had to talk a whole bunch of DI geeks at ILM into doing it his way (probably not an easy task if they are anything like the computer science guys I went to school with)?

You are barking up the wrong tree, I'm afraid. I'm neither a digital nor a film fanboy. I have seen pretty much all there is to see from 8mm to IMAX and Showscan, from DV Cam to Dalsa 4K, from EK prints to normal prints and digital projection from 1280*1024 to 4K, from VHS to LD, DVD and HD. I think I have a good idea what looks how and what to make of it. The world is not black and white for me in the format department. What about you?

And no, I don't live in LA, I live in the heartland, like it says on my profile. 4th Generation copies beat A DIs and B Digital Projection every time. If you think 1080i HD beats a theatre print, you're nuts.

Thanks, but DI is not HD 1080i and a reasonable discussion makes a distinction between different sources and projectors at the very minimum. The quality split is not between analogue and digital but elsewhere. If you prefer your standard prints to a 2K digital projection that's fine with me. I find both far from optimal. The standard prints look simply bad compared to the best prints you can make. And the digital projections in cinemas lack all good blacks and image depth with dark material (the projection, not the digital source!). Aliasing is frequent as well. For films with no DI I like best high quality prints from the camera negative (rarely available to me). For films with DI a 4K projection of the DI.

[Michel Hafner]

http://www.festival-cannes.fr/en/article/56094.html

Steven Spielberg on digital or not digital:

"The film is being released digitally on a lot of screens, about 300. Making a film digitally and releasing a film in the same digital process gives a beautiful image. It creates an extraordinarily clean, sharp image, but making a film on celluloid - as I?d like to do with all of my pictures ?then transferring, releasing it, and projecting it digitally is a very inferior image.

That's an interesting claim but without further details rather puzzling. Where exactly is that inferiority supposed to crawl in?

Is it the digital projectors? But then why would the same projectors suddenly make a beautiful picture with an originally digital process providing the source (whatever he means here: Computer cartoons/CGI? HD material? Dalsa?)?

If it's not the projector it must be the source. But the source format on the data level is the same, whether you fill the bytes with information coming from film elements, computer files or digital cameras. So if it's not the source format it must be how the information is put into the source. Is Spielberg saying today's scanners are no good and can't convert the information on the film properly into digital form? What exactly does he mean?

[K Borowski]

That's an interesting claim but without further details rather puzzling. Where exactly is that inferiority supposed to crawl in?

Is it the digital projectors? But then why would the same projectors suddenly make a beautiful picture with an originally digital process providing the source (whatever he means here: Computer cartoons/CGI? HD material? Dalsa?)?

If it's not the projector it must be the source. But the source format on the data level is the same, whether you fill the bytes with information coming from film elements, computer files or digital cameras. So if it's not the source format it must be how the information is put into the source. Is Spielberg saying today's scanners are no good and can't convert the information on the film properly into digital form? What exactly does he mean?

 

Well, I don't agree that digital projectors make beautiful pictures regardless of source. I've never seen a 4K, but the one 2K showing I (accidentally) attended was hugely disappointing, so much so I almost went and asked for my money back. There was nothign technically wrong, it just din't look crisp and vivid, like film.

 

The problem is that digital is a medium with flaws, and it is in many cases INCAPABLE of putting back onto film what could have been achieved through the optical printing process. It can get close, with meticulous scanner calibration, painstaking testing of sharpening levels, and 4K+ scans, but it seems that the motion picture industry has adopted an attitude of "good enough".

 

Sure, grain sucks, scratches suck (I don't mind dust), weave sucks, and poor projector maintenance sucks. but digital just adds its own problems. It really doesn't make anything better.

 

Digital EFFECTS are great, when not overused. But you have to deal with all sorts of compromises to get them onto the film. Scanning a whole movie into a computer needlessly degrades all of the footage with digital artifacts, limited color range, and a host of other problems.

 

And DIs are more expensive too!

[K Borowski]

I guess my overall problem with digital is that it NEEDLESSLY COMPLICATES the whole process of filmmaking and is threatening to obsolete equipment in months instead of half-centuries. I already saw the technological arms race destroy still photography and the music industry; I don't want to see it destroy feature films now too.

[Michel Hafner]

Well, I don't agree that digital projectors make beautiful pictures regardless of source. I've never seen a 4K, but the one 2K showing I (accidentally) attended was hugely disappointing, so much so I almost went and asked for my money back. There was nothign technically wrong, it just din't look crisp and vivid, like film.

Digital projections are indeed of varying quality as are the sources used. In my personal opinion 2K projectors don't have enough resolution to make a picture that looks as analogue and free of digital artifacts as a print from the OCN looks once you sit close enough that your eyes resolve down to the pixel level (which is realistic wth 20/20 vision and sitting in the first couple of rows/sitting <= ~1.5 screen heights away). In addition the On-Off contrast which is stuck at ~2000-2500:1 these days provides for quite elevated black levels and a flat looking picture with low APL material. Whereas digital projectors for home cinema go as high as real 30000:1 now and do far better with dark material.

2K projectors simply can not make sharp pictures without showing aliasing/jaggies. Sharp as in sharp looking on big cinema screens. Everytime it looks really sharp (as in white letters on black ground during credits) the jaggies show up. If they don't the letters are somewhat fuzzy. One or the other. The same goes for sharp textures and edges on real footage.

The problem is that digital is a medium with flaws, and it is in many cases INCAPABLE of putting back onto film what could have been achieved through the optical printing process.

Digital has flaws as has film. These days you can do digital in transparent ways. The DI can capture all relevant information from the negative. But each transformation step has a lot of potential to degrade the quality and there are many steps from OCN to print from DI. I don't like the DI route with film prints in the end at all. But as long as we have no digital projectors that can really render 4K sources as they are there are valid arguments to continue to make prints (in addition to the economic realities of existing cinema infrastructure and the archival requirements).

[Michel Hafner]

I guess my overall problem with digital is that it NEEDLESSLY COMPLICATES the whole process of filmmaking and is threatening to obsolete equipment in months instead of half-centuries. I already saw the technological arms race destroy still photography and the music industry; I don't want to see it destroy feature films now too.

What exactly are you talking about? The quality of the end product or the mere survival of certain technologies and the companies clinging to them?

If you talk about the quality of the end product do you mean technical or artistic quality?

I would have to disagree that with current digital still photography or digital music recording you are getting a technically worse product than you got with film stills or analogue music recordings, at least as far as the technology itself is concerned (as opposed to how people use it).

Concerning the needless complication you got a point in a film world with no digital effects and no need for making anything but prints directly from the OCN. But this world is not today's world. The digital part is here to stay and making prints from OCN for everybody is totally out of the question.

[K Borowski]

I would have to disagree that with current digital still photography or digital music recording you are getting a technically worse product than you got with film stills or analogue music recordings, at least as far as the technology itself is concerned (as opposed to how people use it).

 

You can't differentiate the two.

 

I don't know why you continue to disseminate all of my posts. You're not going to change my mind. I cannot and will not separate a technology from its technological impact. Digital isn't going to "revolutionize" or "reinvent" theatres, it's goign to bankrupt them and shut them down, because you can get better quality content at home. This is the same reason I don't ues self check outs at stores, technology is being used to replace jobs and increase bottom lines, not make things better.

 

YOu also conceded that film prints look better than 2K. As there isn't a single 4K projector in the area that I know of, all the MORE reason not to pay to see digital projection. It looks BAD, and you shouldn't' ever have to see bad (at least technically, content is another story altogether at a theatre).

 

So you've agreed with the base point of my argument. Why are you arguing with me?

[Mark Williams]

Has Digital improved things? for people?

 

How many use Digital Cameras and have low quality images and not a hgh quality negative to archive? OR store the pics on a computer which eventually crashes? I wonder if those precious memories will be kept more than the life of most computers hard drives etc? Or stored on disc that ends up lost wiped or deteriortes? I have pics of my grandfathers generation and my family growing up. Bet many in the digital revolution end up with none. WHAT is actually gained in time saving? If you want a copy you have to have a digital picture developed or use a high quality printer. AND you wont have a high quality negative. Personally I think Digital cameras have not revolutionised but given a different format although most think it has and replaced their film cameras..

 

In the 60s and 70s the BBC thought the video revolution meant they could store all their programmes on naff quality video..

 

Our government companies etc.lThat lose huge amounts of information representing years of work because its digitised.. Through accidents neglect poor training or circumstance.

 

Here we have just had Indiana Jones 4 released How angry would the film makers be that DIGITAL has turned it into a pirate copy of their hard work? Accident deliberate stupidity neglect?

 

Digital is about MAKING MONEY by giving a product thats inferior and costs peanuts the manufactures can make a packet.

 

In the end we all lose consumers and manufacturers.. Digital is a format NOT a replacement and its not up to the standards of film even at 4k Its just not the same.

[K Borowski]

In the 60s and 70s the BBC thought the video revolution meant they could store all their programmes on naff quality video..

 

Too bad for Dr. Who. . .

 

Only the 16mm prints they struck for overseas distribution survived time and video library purges.

[Arni Heimir]

I just saw a 2k projection of it earlier and thought it looked beautiful. I prefer digital projection as my eyes tend to get very tired a watching a very soft image projected normally. More than half of the Icelandic theatres use digital projectors.

 

I also thought the photography in the movie was terrific and I was surprised how sharp the old panavision anamorphic lenses were. Plus I found the movie to be very entertaining in addition to finding the first act of the movie to be testament of Spielberg's command of the medium.

 

Don't be haters... digital projection is the only way to go.

[K Borowski]

Don't be haters... digital projection is the only way to go.

 

:blink:

 

Forgive the generalization, but why is it that mainland Europeans are such technophiles?

[Scott Bryant]

 

interesting.

[Michel Hafner]

YOu also conceded that film prints look better than 2K.

No, not at all. I said 2K is not as good as EK prints in some regards. EK prints are not available to > 99% of the audience.

So you've agreed with the base point of my argument. Why are you arguing with me?

If you read carefully what I say you will see that I have a far more differentiated opinion of the issues than simple good and bad verdicts. You come across as a rather single minded anti digital person, though. I guess it's this which kept me 'coming back for more'.

[Michel Hafner]

Not even Kodak makes such a claim (e.g. you need 10K or so to get all information from the 35mm negative). So based on what tests are you suggesting this? Fact is the MTF goes for all intents and purposes to zero somewhere between 4K and 8K for 35mm (and is quite low between 2K and 4K already), So what kind of relevant information do you think you can find in the 8K to 12K range?

No answer. The answer is available in scientific papers about the issue. 35mm film does not have 10-12K resolution by any accepted standards of measuring resolution. It ends under ideal conditions (measuring static test charts with optimal focusing and exposure) somewhere between 4K and 6K. What's going on > 4K is very subtle and can i no way survive a single analogue copying step to an IP.

[Michael Lehnert]

I guess it's this which kept me 'coming back for more'.

 

I can clearly see that addictive pattern evolving, Michel.

 

After all, in your above post, you are answering to your very own question :P .

[Michael Lehnert]

If my memory serves me well when I remember the 1990s, the failed ('cause way ahead of the learning curve of this industry) Cineon end-to-end solution was originally conceived for working with 6K to 8K. So Kodak was positioning 35mm in this area, as both you and Karl argue. When eventually going to market, it was dumped down to 2K to 4K, yet still failed - most DoPs then couldn't even grasp what the 'K' is all about...

 

So actually, 15 years after Cineon went public, most film productions havn't even started harvesting the 4K+ goodness in 35mm..., let alone getting Super 8 or Super 16 up to their maximum scanning points. So there is a long way to go 'til we see adequate "e-film" results, and alot of margin for cine-film to grow until digital cameras could eventually catch up (if you restrict the debate to resulution and leave texture and colour reproduction and depth out - which unfortunately is usually done in REDuserForums).

 

Still, that doesn't put Kaminski's and Spielberg's work on Indy IV where their mouths were all those months before..: "It'll be be Slocombe redux, it'll integrate perfectly, it'll look like ECN, it'll be integral to the trilogy, it'll be 1980s-lit, we will finally see how Indy became Darth Vader"... oh, hold on, that was something else...

[Michel Hafner]

After all, in your above post, you are answering to your very own question :P .

I would have preferred an answer from the author of the claim, together with some references

to papers. Helas nothing was forthcoming.

[Michael Lehnert]

I would have preferred an answer from the author of the claim, together with some references

to papers. Helas nothing was forthcoming.

 

I think Karl - if you mean him - is currently busy posting in this thread, which also touches the 35@8K in relation to Cineon's original and Arri's current resolution capability and the actual film-out quality that results from that. I guess going over to that thread wouldn't harm it - it's already quite off-topic.

 

Cheers,

 

-Michael

[Michel Hafner]

I think Karl - if you mean him - is currently busy posting in this thread, which also touches the 35@8K in relation to Cineon's original and Arri's current resolution capability and the actual film-out quality that results from that. I guess going over to that thread wouldn't harm it - it's already quite off-topic.

I think I'll pass. Film high priests and digital acquisition high priests have become equally obnoxious, while the reality of the quality reaching the audience is sobering in most cases.